Q33: Should those who have faith in Christ seek their salvation through their own works, or anywhere else?

A question and responses from New City Catechism. Our church plant small groups are going through these this year. Didn’t know about our church plant ? Check out the website :

www.coastalfellowship.com

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/ncc/2013/06/03/q33-should-those-who-have-faith-in-christ-seek-their-salvation-through-their-own-works-or-anywhere-else/

Ready to worship the Savior

 

 

 

Glory

The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret.

And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes highly relevant to our deep desire. For glory means good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.

— C. S. LewisThe Weight of Glory(New York, NY: HarperOne, 2001), 40-41

 

 

ht:OFI

O Sweet Exchange!

“But when our wickedness had reached its height, and it had been clearly shown that its reward, punishment and death, was impending over us; and when the time had come which God had before appointed for manifesting His own kindness and power, how the one love of God, through exceeding regard for men, did not regard us with hatred, nor thrust us away, nor remember our iniquity against us, but showed great long-suffering, and bore with us, He Himself took on Him the burden of our iniquities, He gave His own Son as a ransom for us, the holy One for transgressors, the blameless One for the wicked, the righteous One for the unrighteous, the incorruptible One for the corruptible, the immortal One for them that are mortal. For what other thing was capable of covering our sins than His righteousness? By what other one was it possible that we, the wicked and ungodly, could be justified, than by the only Son of God? O sweet exchange! O unsearchable operation! O benefits surpassing all expectation! that the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors!”

The quote is from The Epistle to Diognetus 9, translated by Roberts-Donaldson. This text dates from early to mid 2nd century AD. It is an early indication that the doctrines of substitutionary atonement and double imputation were not first the product of the Protestant Reformation, but were held dear by the earliest generations of Christians. The author is unknown – he refers to himself simply as a mathetes “disciple”.

 

 

HT:JohnSamson

Holiness by Choosing What’s Best | the Cripplegate

“Is there anything wrong with this?” That’s the question Christians usually ask to determine whether something is acceptable. To be sure, it’s not a bad question. But there’s an equally important question that we ought to be asking: “Is there anything sanctifying in this?”

Read the article here:

http://thecripplegate.com/holiness-b-choosing-whats-best/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheCripplegate+%28The+Cripplegate%29

The Gospel is the Food of Faith

“The new life in Christ, just like all natural life, must be nourished and strengthened. This is possible only in communion with Christ in the Holy Spirit and through the word of Scripture. Enlightened by the Spirit, believers gain a new knowledge of faith. The gospel is the food of faith and must be known to be nourishment. Salvation that is not known and enjoyed is no salvation. God saves by causing himself to be known and enjoyed in Christ.”

— Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 4: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation(Grand Rapids, Mi.: Baker Academic, 2008), 96

from Pastor Jared Wilson ‘s blog

Christ cursed for us

God cannot look where there is sin with any pleasure, and though as far as Jesus is personally concerned, he is the Father’s beloved Son in whom he is well pleased; yet when he saw sin laid upon his Son, he made that Son cry, ‘My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?’

It was not possible that Jesus should enjoy the light of his Father’s presence while he was made sin for us; consequently he went through a horror of great darkness, the root and source of which was the withdrawing of the conscious enjoyment of the Father’s presence. More than that, not only was light withdrawn, but positive sorrow was inflicted. God must punish sin, and though sin was not Christ’s by his actually doing it, yet it was laid upon him, and therefore he was made a curse for us … God only knows the griefs to which the Son of God was put when the Lord made to meet upon him the iniquity of us all. To crown all there was death itself.

— Charles Spurgeon, quoted by Steve Jeffery, et al. inPierced for Our Transgressions (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2007), 194

 

HT:OFI

Watch “Holy Spirit, Living Breath of God” on YouTube

“10,000 Reasons”

Deut. 9; D.A. Carson

IF DEUTERONOMY 8 REMINDS THE Israelites that God is the One who gave them all their material blessings, not least the ability to work and produce wealth, Deuteronomy 9 insists he is also the One who will enable them to take over the Promised Land and vanquish their opponents. Before the struggle, the Israelites are still fighting their fears. God is the one who goes across ahead of you like a devouring fire. He will destroy them; he will subdue them before you” (Deut. 9:3). But after the struggle, the temptation of the Israelites will be quite different. Then they will be tempted to think that, whatever their fears before the event, it was their own intrinsic superiority that enabled them to accomplish the feat. So Moses warns them:

After the Lord your God has driven them out before you do not say to yourself,
“The Lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my
righteousness.” No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the
Lord is going to drive them out before you. It is not because of your righteous-
ness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of their land; but
on account of the wickedness of these nations . . . to accomplish what he swore
to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Understand, then, that it is not
because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good
land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people (Deut. 9:4-6).

And the evidence for this last point? Moses reminds them of their sorry rebellions during the wilderness years, starting from the wretched incident of the golden calf (Deut. 9:4-29).

What shall we learn? (1) Although the annihilation of the Canaanites fills us with embarrassed horror, there is a sense in which (dare I say it?) we had better get used to it. It is of a piece with the Flood, with the destruction of several empires, with hell itself. The proper response is Luke 13:1-5: unless we repent, we shall all likewise perish. (2) It may be true to say that the Israelites won because the Canaanites were so evil. It does not follow that the Canaanites lost because the Israelites were so good. God was working to improve the Israelites out of his own covenantal faithfulness. But they were extremely foolish if they thought, after the event, that they had earned their triumph. (3) Our temptations, like Israel’s vary with our circumstances: faithless fear in one circumstance, arrogant pride in another. Only the closest walk with God affords us the self-criticism that abominates both.

 

from D.A. Carson’s blog

Blood-sprinkled words

If the mark of his blood is upon any word, thou needest never doubt it. If he has died, how canst thou perish? If he has bidden thee come, how can he cast thee out? If thou dost rest upon his finished work, how canst thou be condemned? Believe, I pray thee, and rest thee on the blood-sprinkled words of this wondrousBook.

— Charles Spurgeon“Words to Rest On”

 

 

Ht:OFI

How to describe a Christian

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.  1 John 5:1

Preaching on this verse in 1694, John Howe described what it looks like for a person to be “born of God,” that is, regenerate:

“. . . a mighty power from God coming upon their souls, conforming them to God, addicting them to God, uniting them with God, making them to center in God, taking them off from all this world. . . . It is a great thing to be a Christian!”

Edmund Calamy, editor, The Works of the Rev. John Howe (London, 1846), page 896.

 

Ht:RayOrtlund

Deut. 8; D.A. Carson

DEUTERONOMY 8 PROVIDES AN important theological perspective on the forty years of wandering in the wilderness. Because God is a personal God, one can tell the story of those years in terms of the interaction between God and his people: he meets their need, they rebel, he responds in judgment, they repent — and then the cycle repeats itself. On the other hand, one can look at the whole account from the perspective of God’s transcendent and faithful sovereignty. He remains in charge. That is the vantage offered here.

Of course, God could have given them everything they wanted before they had even bothered to articulate their desires. He could have spoiled them rotten. Instead, his intention was to humble them, to test them, even to let them hunger before eventually feeding them with manna (Deut. 8:2-3). The purpose of this latter exercise, Moses insists, was that God might teach them “that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD” (Deut. 8:3). More generally: “Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you” (Deut. 8:5).

Why all this discipline? The sad reality is that fallen people like you and me readily fixate on God’s gifts and ignore their Giver. At some point, this degenerates into worshiping the created thing rather than the Creator (cf. Rom. 1:25). God knows that is Israel’s danger. He is bringing them into a land with agricultural promise, adequate water, and mineral wealth (Deut. 8:6-9). What likelihood would there be at that point of learning that “man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD”?

Even after these forty years of discipline, the dangers will prove enormous. So Moses spells the lessons out to them. Once the people have settled in the Promised Land and are enjoying its considerable wealth, the dangers will begin. “Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees” (Deut. 8:11). With wealth will come the temptation to arrogance, prompting the people to forget the Lord who brought them out of slavery (Deut. 8:12-14). In the end, not only will they value the wealth above the words of God, they may even justify themselves, proudly declaiming, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me” (Deut. 8:17) — conveniently forgetting that even the ability to produce wealth is a gracious gift from God (Deut. 8:18).

In what ways does your life show you cherish every word that comes from the mouth of God, above all the blessings and even the necessities of this life?

 

 

from D.A. Carson’s blog

Deut. 7; D.A. Carson

SEVERAL COMPLEX THEMES intertwine in Deuteronomy 7. Here I want to reflect on two of them.

The first is the emphasis on election. “For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession” (Deut. 7:6). Why so? Was it on the ground of some intrinsic superiority, some greater intelligence, some moral superiority, or some military prowess that the Lord made his choice? Not so. “The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt” (Deut. 7:7-8).

Two observations: (1) In the Bible, God’s utter sovereignty does not diminish human responsibility; conversely, human beings are moral agents who choose, believe, obey, disbelieve, and disobey, and this fact does not make God’s sovereignty finally contingent. That is clear from the way God’s sovereignty manifests itself in this chapter, that is, in election, even while the chapter bristles with the responsibilities laid on the people. People who do not believe both truths — that God is sovereign and human beings are responsible — sooner or later introduce some intolerable wobbles into the structure of their faith. (2) Here God’s love is selective. God chooses Israel because he sets his affection on them, and not for anything in themselves. The thought recurs elsewhere (e.g., Mal. 1:2-3). But this is not the only way that the Bible speaks of the love of God (e.g., John 3:16).

The second theme is the encouragement God gives his people not to fear the people they will have to fight as they take over the Promised Land (Deut. 7:17-22). The reason is the Exodus. Any God that could produce the plagues, divide the Red Sea, and free his people from a regional superpower like Egypt is not the kind of God who is going to have trouble with a few pagan and immoral Canaanites. Fear is the opposite of faith. The Israelites are encouraged not to be afraid, not because they are stronger or better, but because they are the people of God, and God is unbeatable.

These two themes — and several others — intertwine in this chapter. The God who chooses people is strong enough to accomplish all his purposes in them; the people chosen by God ought to respond not only with grateful obedience, but with unshakable trust.

 

 

from D.A. Carson’s blog

Trusting His Heart When You Cannot Trace His Hand

a quote by John Calvin from Kevin DeYoung’s blog

John Calvin:

Now this, also, ought to be added, that although either fatherly favor and beneficence or severity of judgment often shine forth in the whole course of providence, nevertheless sometimes the causes of the events are hidden.

So the thought creeps in that human affairs turn and whirl at the blind urge of fortune; or the flesh incites us to contradiction, as if God were making sport of men by throwing them like balls. It is, indeed, true that if we had quiet and composed minds ready to learn, the final outcome would show that God always has the best reason for his plan:

either to instruct his own people in patience,

or to correct their wicked affections and tame their lust,

or to subjugate them to self-denial,

or to rouse them from sluggishness;

again, to bring low the proud, to shatter the cunning of the impious and to overthrow their devices.

Yet however hidden and fugitive from our point of view the causes may be, we must hold that they are surely laid up with him, and hence we must exclaim with David: “Great, O God, are the wondrous deeds that thou hast done, and thy thoughts toward us cannot be reckoned; if I try to speak, they would be more than can be told” [Ps. 40:5].

(Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.17.1)